The airport arrival lounge was packed – wall-to-wall people. Cigarette smoke curled and writhed around the light fixtures in the ceiling, and children ducked and weaved between the legs of the milling adults, playing tag or hide-and-seek. The parents of the more boisterous children were forever bobbing up and down to see where their offspring were now, and whether they were annoying anyone. People lounged on uncomfortable plastic chairs and tripped over potted plants. And they all watched the screens that displayed the arrival times of flights, anxious to greet their friends and family and get out of the chaotic airport.

One little girl stood with her nose pressed against the window, watching the planes coming in. Her long blond curls fluttered in the air conditioning. Occasionally she would glance over to the small table where her parents were trying to have a quiet cup of coffee, and succeeding surprisingly well, under the circumstances.

Even more occasionally, she would give a small, impatient sigh. She was only six years old, and she was tired of waiting. But she wouldn’t leave her spot by the window until she saw Jenny, because then Jenny might not come. She had to stay right there, by the window, watching and waiting, until Jenny saw her from the window of the plane and waved. Then Jenny would know that they were there, waiting and watching.

Unlike all the other young children in the room, she never once asked when the traveller was going to arrive, when they could go home, or to be taken to the toilet. She stood stock still by the window, as immobile as a rock, and waited for Jenny.

She jumped when her mother tapped her gently on the shoulder.

“It’s only me, Dani,” her mother said, “Jenny’s plane just came in. Let’s go closer to the door so we can meet her.”

“But I didn’t see her! She doesn’t know we’re here!” Dani cried, worried that, since her vigil had been interrupted, the visit she had been looking forward to for weeks might not take place.

“Don’t worry, she knows. We agreed on the phone that we’d meet here.”

“But…”

“Don’t worry, Dani.”

Together, they joined Dani’s father at the entrance from the baggage reclaim, where Jenny would meet them. Dani peered through the frosted glass, trying to make out which blurred shape was Jenny. She hadn’t seen her sister in almost six months. She was nineteen, and lived in her own house ‘way up North.’ No one ever specified where ‘up North’ was, and Dani never asked. All she knew was that Jenny lived there with Kevin, and that her mum and dad didn’t like Kevin much. Dani was shocked when Jenny told Mum and Dad that she was moving out to live with Kevin. She had never done anything that her mum and dad didn’t approve of before that.

Suddenly, the glass doors opened with a pneumatic wheeze and people poured through. Dani hadn’t realised how many people could fit in an aeroplane, having never been on one herself. A large woman nearly squashed her with a huge tartan suitcase on rattly wheels, and a group of foreign men in business suits bumped their way past her to get to the rent-a-car booths in the next room. Finally, behind everyone else, Dani caught sight of a tall, thin girl with gorgeous blond curls down to her waist.

“JENNY!” she yelled, barrelling past tourists and businessmen, families and airline staff. “JENNY, IT’S ME!”

Jenny dropped her bags when she saw this human cannonball charging toward her, and fell to her knees. She caught Dani mid-leap over an abandoned rucksack and wrapped her arms around the tiny frame of her little sister.

Together, they hauled Jenny’s heavy suitcase and backpack through the frosted doors and rejoined their parents.

“How are you, Jenny?” Dad asked.

Jenny smiled and shrugged. “I’m okay.”

“How was the flight?” prompted Mum.

“It was fine. I’ve been on much busier planes than that.”

Dani had a sudden vision of an aeroplane packed full of people like sardines, and Jenny sitting right in the middle squashed between the lady with the tartan suitcase and the foreign businessmen. She gave Jenny another hug to get rid of the image.

“We better get to the car, or we’ll never get out of here,” said Dani’s dad. “The traffic will be terrible in a little while.”

“And I’d quite like to get home today,” added her mum, a hint of sarcasm in her voice.

Dani skipped to the car, holding Jenny’s hand. But in the midst of her joy, a little part of her mind was troubled. It was looking at the faces of Jenny and Mum and Dad and listening to the somewhat strained conversation, and it had put two and two together and decided something wasn’t quite right. By the time the engine of the shining red Ford was running, it had Dani firmly convinced that Mum and Dad didn’t want Jenny to stay at all. She though this over, the look of concentration on her young face causing Jenny to laugh, but as they reached the motorway that same little part of her mind had looked long and hard at Jenny as well, and Dani didn’t like what it saw. It was pretty sure Jenny didn’t want to come either, but she had come because she missed Dani.

The little girl started to feel quite guilty. It was obvious to her now that her parents and Jenny could hardly stand to be around each other, but they were doing it for Dani. She felt so bad about it that she started to feel a little carsick, and when they reached the house around six, she asked to skip dinner and go straight to bed.

“Are you going to be alright, Dani?” Jenny looked at her sister worriedly.

“She’ll be fine. But are you sure you don’t want anything to eat?” Mum nudged Jenny aside to crouch in front of Dani, who nodded her head.

“I just wanna go to bed,” she whispered.

Eventually her parents gave in, and while Dad cooked spaghetti for dinner, Mum put her to bed with a hot water bottle, in case she was catching a cold or something. She gave Dani a kiss on the forehead, and with a last glance at the child, left the bedroom.

But Dani couldn’t sleep She lay awake, listening to the murmur of voices in the dining room below the back bedroom, where she slept, but when she heard Mum coming to check on her, she rolled over so her back was to the door and pretended to be fast asleep. She didn’t want them to come in and talk to her.

She lay awake long after Dad had locked up, hours after Jenny had gone to bed in the spare room (that used to be her real bedroom), ages after the whispered conversation in her parents’ room had died and become the sound of her father’s light snores. And when she was sure there was no one to hear her, she began to cry.

---

The visit was to last a week. But on the evening of the second day, Dani could see that the charade of friendliness couldn’t last much longer. A short time after she brushed her teeth and went to bed, she heard the inevitable argument begin downstairs. She didn’t know what the three of them were fighting about, but she was smart enough to know that it probably involved Kevin.

She pretended to be asleep again when she heard angry footsteps on the stairs, but it turned out she needn’t have bothered. The first set belonged to Jenny, storming to her room. The second and third that followed a short while later were her parents’, who obviously didn’t really want the argument to be over. Just from the tone of the murmured exchange in her parents’ room, Dani could tell that there were going to be fireworks in the morning, and not the good kind that you got on Guy Fawke’s Night, sparklers and Catherine Wheels and firecrackers. No, these would be rockets, the big dangerous kind, the ones you had to stand really far away from and that were lit with a long stick. She decided that she better get as far away as possible.

That was why, a half hour or so later, some insomniac staring out of his window would have seen a small figure in a black coat with a backpack slinking from shadow to shadow on her way down the street. It was also why the sun, when it rose a few hours after that, found itself shining on a little girl fast asleep in an abandoned doorway in an alley in the centre of the town.

---

Dani soon regretted running away. She awoke, stiff and cold, just as the shops in the next few streets were opening. Her stomach gave a low rumble and she realised that she was ravenous, having eaten next to nothing for two days. She wandered into a café on a side street, where she was unlikely to be seen by anyone she knew, and asked the man behind the counter for a pastry. She paid with money taken hurriedly from her piggybank late the previous night. She had had a birthday just recently, so there was a lot of money there. She decided she better have some hot chocolate as well, since she was so cold.

She sat by herself at a table intended for two people, and sipped the hot liquid slowly. As she nibbled the pastry, which was filled with cherry jam, she watched a few people walk past outside the shop. She was still the only person in the café when she left her table to use the toilet, and when she came out there were only two men standing at the counter hurriedly downing cappuccinos.

The single member of staff currently in the shop, who had served Dani, kept casting suspicious glances in her direction. She decided she should go somewhere where she would be a little less conspicuous on her own. Leaving the shop, she noticed several women who were obviously on their way out for a day’s shopping. Some of them were pushing prams and pushchairs with babies in them, or chatting to each other. Dani followed two ladies with a pushchair, and tried to look like she was with them. She knew she had to be careful, in case they thought she was going to steal something, but they didn’t notice her.

As the women passed a park, Dani slipped through the gates. She wouldn’t be obvious here. There were plenty of children playing on climbing frames and swings, and several boys organising a football game. Dani sat down on an empty swing, and began to swing back and forth reflectively. She was making a plan.

---

Sadly, the best plan Dani could come up with involved staying in the park for as long as possible. She bought a hot dog from a stall for lunch, and ate it sitting on a bench near the adventure playground where she had spent most of the morning. She didn’t leave the bench until an old man, out for an evening stroll, sat down next to her. She didn’t want to talk to him. He might figure out that she had run away.

The child wandered out of the park, thinking that maybe she would get some chips from the fish and chip shop for dinner. As she left the shop, having received nothing but indifference and lukewarm French fries from the teenage boy behind the counter, she realised that it was getting very dark. She began to worry about where to sleep. She couldn’t go back to the alleyway where she had spent the previous night; it was far too cold there, and she couldn’t get sick. She thought that maybe she would go back to the park, and sleep in the tree house she had played in earlier. At least it would keep out the wind, and it had a roof, in case of rain.

Dani soon found her way back to the park, and was halfway up the ladder to the tree house when she heard a shout. She turned around to see several teenagers headed her way. When they got a little closer, she saw that some of them were very obviously drunk. Two of the boys were singing a vulgar song, and some of the girls were smoking.

Dani jumped down from the tree and ran. That was a mistake. The older boys and girls started to run, too. They were intent on catching her. They shouted things that, in her panic, she couldn’t understand, and jumped over bushes and benches that she had to go around. They were catching up.

Dani glanced behind her to see how far away they were. She never noticed what was in front of her.

Then there was a patch of mud, and she slipped-

A scream-

The crack of ice-

A splash-

Silence.

---

Five days later, a tall girl with long blond hair tucked up under the hood of her coat entered the graveyard in the rain. She walked past all the old rows of mouldy granite and marble headstones, to a small white marble one all by itself in a new row. There were flowers strewn all around it, chrysanthemums and roses and lilies.

Jenny put the plastic covered piece of paper that she had brought with her on the ground in front of the gravestone. Then she wiped her eyes and walked away, out of the graveyard, back to her parents’ house, where she called a taxi. It took her to the airport, and she flew home to Kevin.

On closer inspection, the paper she left behind her, as a last message to her sister is clearly a newspaper cutting from the local evening newspaper. It reads:

LOCAL CHILD FOUND IN POND

Lightwater, Surrey: Danielle Emma Baxter was found dead early this morning in a pond in the Lightwater town park. It is believed that she fell into the pond late last night, not noticing it in the dark. She was found by a woman out walking her dog around seven o’clock. The woman, a local named Stephanie Harris, told police, “I was very shocked. Well, who wouldn’t be? But I was especially stunned to find Dani in the park because I know her family, and I know that her sister was in town for the week. I don’t understand why the child was away from home at all. At least she had the chance to see her sister again. I’m sure she died happy.” Caroline Finster